During a press conference Sunday, St. Cloud Police Chief Blair Anderson confirmed they found Aden’s vehicle in the mall parking lot and it’s been impounded.
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President Barack Obama and several others hailed the off-duty police officer who shot and killed Adan as a hero.
The motive of the Saturday attack is still unclear, but FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Rick Thornton said on Sunday that the stabbings were being investigated as a “potential act of terrorism”.
Adan had recently been employed part-time by the security firm Securitas, and he was assigned for a few months to an Electrolux factory near the mall, Electrolux spokeswoman Eloise Hale said.
He also said there’s no evidence that links the stabbings to the explosions in NY and New Jersey.
In response to this weekend’s stabbings, members of the Muslim and Somali communities held a news conference Sunday to mourn the victims and call for unity.
Ryan Schliep, a victim of the Minnesota mall stabbing, said that Dahir Adan was silent during the attack.
A Somali community advocate who spoke with Adan’s parents said he was going to the mall to pick up an iPhone.
In 2013, CAIR called on police in nearby Waite Park to reject a training program about Somalis because a flier unfairly suggested the activities of al-Shabab – a militant group in east Africa that has had success in recruiting Somali-Americans in Minnesota – are supported by most Muslims.
A report by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security previous year showed that Minnesota produced the largest amount of individuals who “left the country to fight with terrorists” and “sought to become foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq”.
Although Dahir was born in Kenya, his father described him as Somali and said he had been living in the United States for the past 15 years.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for four attacks in the USA since 2015, adding to Adan’s case the Orlando nightclub, Garland, and San Bernardino shootings.
LSSND said it will work with ethnic and religious groups, city leaders and law enforcement officials to ensure the stabbing attack does not drive the community apart.
The assault would be the first time a Somali person attacks US citizens on American soil.
St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis said three remained in hospital with one being treated for life-threatening injuries. Authorities have not confirmed a link to any terrorist groups, but a news agency tied to the Islamic State asserted responsibility for the attack, calling Adan was “a soldier of the Islamic State”.
It was not immediately clear if the extremist group had planned Saturday’s attack or knew about it beforehand. That was before the Islamic State began urging “lone wolf” attacks in countries that are part of a US -led coalition against their group.
Authorities haven’t identified the attacker, but his father, Ahmed Adan, told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune his son’s name through an interpreter.
Chief David Todd said Fargo police gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation basic information it had about Adan and his family. But community activists say the population – most of it in the Minneapolis area – is much higher.
“We would really rather be prepared and try to be ahead of it as opposed to us responding”, Officer Sam Clemens says. The victims included eight men, one woman and a 15-year-old girl. Other officers were searching shrubbery near the mall with flashlights, according to St. Cloud Times staffers on the scene.
Harley and Tama Exsted of Isle, who were in St. Cloud Saturday to watch their son play in a college golf tournament at Blackberry Ridge, were in the mall when the incident occurred. The suspect is believed to be dead, St. Cloud Police Sgt. Jason Burke told the St. Cloud Times. “Officer Falconer was there at the right time and the right place”, he said.
Adan lived in a run-down brick apartment building, where almost all of his neighbors were also Somali, across from a strip mall on the west side of St Cloud.
Kleis said video from inside the mall shows Falconer shooting once and the attacker falling and getting back up three times. When the stabbings began, Bayne ran out to the parking lot and took off in her vehicle, crying and shaking in the aftermath of an event she never thought would happen there. Weires said she saw a man who appeared to be a security guard sprinting down the hallway, and then two men stumbled out.
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Abdullahi said the violent actions of one man should not cast all Somalis in a negative light.
